Better late than never

Posted: Friday, May 10th, 2013BY: John Kubal, The Brookings Register

Corn stalks from last year's harvest stand in a wet field on a farm Tuesday near Carlisle, Iowa. The USDA's weekly crop progress report showed that just 12 percent of the nation's cornfields have been sown, about one-fourth of the typical pace over the past five years. The numbers have been even worse in the biggest corn-producing state, Iowa, where only 8 percent of the corn crop is in the ground, down from 62 percent the same time last year. The USDA says it's the slowest planting pace since 1995 in Iowa, which was socked by a snowstorm last week.

• Spring planting now under way

BROOKINGS – Weather and the precipitation it brings – or doesn't bring. If any way of life is dependent on those uncontrolable factors, it would have to be farming.

Following a long, hard winter that finally seems to have ended, those working in the various elements of agribusiness are looking to see what the spring planting is bringing and will bring. Farmers are getting into their fields later than many of them would have liked. But now the time has come.

As of Monday afternoon, Tom Davis, who farms about 12 miles northeast of Brookings, had his small grains in and was ready to start planting corn on Tuesday; he estimated that would take 10 to 12 days. Once that is complete, planting of beans will follow.